The Marvel Family: To Fly Again
by Cyn Finnegan
Summary: Universe-S: Billy Batson has vanished, Mary Batson is forced to retire her heroic alter ego and Freddy Freeman is embroiled in a mystery. Can the Marvel Family solve this, or will they fall into the claws of a vengeful demoness?


**The Marvel Family: To Fly Again  
**  
by Cynthia Finnegan  
Marvel Family & related characters © 2000 - 2005 DC Comics, Inc.  
Caitlin & Robyn O'Riordan © 2000 - 2005, Cynthia Finnegan. All rights reserved.

**Prologue  
**  
Somewhere in the deepest bowels of Hell, a demoness looks into the flames of her scrying hearth and watched her three young foes intently. She found tremendous amusement in the troubles she caused between the once-inseparable trio, a boy reporter, a crippled newsboy and a pretty, auburn-haired junior high school girl, and at the rifts those troubles caused, especially for the girl. The two boys, best friends since the day they met, were now bickering over the least little thing and the girl, who always wound up caught in the middle, was sick and tired of their now-constant arguing.

The boy reporter, Billy Batson, had become angry and combative towards his friends and family since the World's Mightiest Villain, Black Adam, attempted to drown him in the Hudson River four months earlier. He had even broken up with his long-time girlfriend, Cissie Sommerly, shortly after the incident and in the worst possible way. He gave no reasons why, he only told the cute blonde that he was tired of her constant nagging. He and his best friend, newsboy Freddy Freeman, actually came to blows over it.

The girl, Billy's twin sister, Mary Batson, had been literally whisked away from everyone she knew and loved, sent from her home in Long Island to a ritzy private school, the Rosemont Academy for Young Ladies in California, by her foster parents, the Bromfields. She was miserable and homesick, missing her brother and her friends but her adopted parents remained adamant. She was told to disassociate herself not only from the Freeman brat, but from her "other self," Mary Marvel.

The Freeman brat, himself, had been suspicious of his best friend's mysterious changes in behavior since the day after Black Adam's attack, but he had no way of proving there was anything amiss, and he probably wouldn't be believed if he had that proof. No matter, his suspicions alone made him a danger to the demon's scheme. He would have to be dealt with, and soon.

_If he only knew what was _truly_ going on,_ the demoness thought with savage glee. _I wonder how Freddy will enjoy spending the rest of his days reliving his grandfather's death over and over again, each time worse than the last? It would probably drive him mad._

As she watched the three, sorcerous power from the blackest corners of this realm began to warp and weave, causing her features to bubble and shift like boiling water poured on cold beach sand. Her long, straight, coal black hair became shorter, curly and the color of burnished copper. The pair of ebon horns that graced her brow vanished. Her yellow eyes changed to light blue, and the red, snake-slitted pupils became round and black. Her scaly, mustard-colored skin smoothed and paled into a soft roses and cream complexion. Long-taloned claws began to shrink into small, slender hands, and cloven hooves lengthened into human-looking feet, right down to the sheer pink nail polish the girl favored.

She saw her alterations in a fetid pool and laughed. Like she had done to her pawn four months earlier, she became a doppelganger of her foe.

_Thus have I sown the seeds of distrust and despair in their hearts,_ the demoness called Brimstone thought as she tossed her head back, laughing heartily. _Soon now ... very soon ... I'll have all three of you within my grasp, and both your bodies and souls will be mine ..._

_  
_  
_Blanket disclaimer for this fanfic: this story is an out-of-continuity parody based on the SHAZAM! Comics written by E. Nelson Bridwell and illustrated by Don Newton. It is neither steeped in nor is it connected with the current continuity of DC Comics. DC's current continuity lacks imagination. And guts.  
_  
_I do not claim any rights to the Marvel Family or the characters associated with them. Those rights belong to DC Comics (damn it all). The only characters I own in this work of fiction are Brimstone, Caitlin and Robyn O'Riordan (© Cynthia Finnegan, 2005). I offer my thanks to C.C. Beck, Bill Parker, Otto Binder, Mac Raboy and Marc Swayze for creating such "marvelous" characters for me to terrorize._


End file.
